Top 9 Most Shocking Video Game Scandals

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#Gamergate

Definitely the most explosive scandal from recent years, Gamergate rocked the gaming industry in such a way that we are still talking about it even after more than 3 years have passed from the incidents. What started as a small s*x conflict between developer Zoe Quinn and the journalist Nathan Grayson evolved into a horrible parade of online shaming and harassing where a lot people who worked in the industry were mercilessly thrashed for things they had never done.

Hideo Kojima vs Konami

The break up between Hideo Kojima and Konami, more precisely the company where he worked for no less than three decades, was one of the most shocking news of recent times, taking everyone by surprise. After removing Kojima’s name from any promotional materials for Metal Gear Solid V, the proverbial cherry on top was the moment when Konami banned him from accepting his own award at the 2015 Game Awards but things didn’t end there, Hideo creating his own company and taking all the developers from his former employer with him.

Godus – Molyneux’s Kickstarter Money

Kickstarter is a real blessing for the small developers who’d like to show their projects to the world but don’t have enough money to do it on their own. But even this inherently good venture had to be tainted in some way sooner rather than later, and the incident where Peter Molyneux raised $800,000 for his god simulator, Godus, and then handed over the project to a mobile developer, without returning to finish it, is an example of how Kickstarter can turn bad really fast.

Mass Effect = S*x Simulator

Mass Effect was a revolutionary title that changed the world of video gaming ever since it was released, its dialogue based gameplay and the fact that the player’s choices affected the final outcome of the plot being two of the aspects that made it such a respectable title. But Fox News had a different opinion and, in one of their shows, they called the game a ͞s*x simulator with nothing more than full digital nudity and playable, graphic s*x͟. We guess that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but stigmatizing a gaming title in such a shameless way without even playing it once is pure evil.

No Man’s Sky – Failed Expectations

The procedurally generated universe of No Man’s Sky was every gamer’s dream come true, the amount of new and original content they would encounter ingame being virtually infinite, but as reality has it, the final product was not as good as expected. In fact, No Man’s Sky was often dubbed No Man’s Lies for the false advertising it used in its trailers and the lack of content with witch gamers were smacked over the face with while roaming the universe in search of new and, hopefully, player populated planets.

Street Fighter X Tekken – On Disk DLC

If you are a gaming company and have a very specific death wish of ruining your firm’s reputation then Capcom has the perfect recipe for you: make 12 of the total in game characters only DLC available and don’t even bother to remove them from the disc, but instead guard them by a paywall that will turn gamers insane. Street Fighter X Tekken is notorious for locking up some of the most popular fighters of the franchise on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 versions, practically showing players that Capcom is all about making money by any means necessary.

Starcraft II – Match Fixing

Esports are a fantastic means of earning good money out of doing what you love most, namely playing video games, but as with any form of respectable sport, there are a lot of ways of cheating, so fixing Starcraft II matches should not come as a surprise, right? These unorthodox means of rigging competitions happened right in South Korea, the motherland of Starcraft, and when this scandal surfaced the entire gaming industry was heavily shaken by it and its future implications. It’s a good thing that the culprits have been arrested and banned for life from playing this game.

Mortal Kombat – The Creation of ESRB

Probably not a lot of gamers know that the ESRB, or Entertainment Software Rating Board, came into being as a result of a scandal between Nintendo, Sega and the first Mortal Kombat game, that made a lot of waves with its intense gore and the violence it featured in its gameplay. As neither company could settle on how they would rate the game so that it wouldn’t fall in the hands of unknowing children, the Congress somewhat forced the gaming industry to regulate its media products or else they would intervene and take the lead. Of course, no one wanted this outcome and this is how the ESRB was formed.

Game Review Scandals – The Case of Jeff Gertsmann

Jeff Gertsmann expressed his opinions on the game Kane & Lynch more than one time and everyone knew about his adversity towards this title, but when he was suddenly fired by GameSpot soon after making his opinions public, people started to question how the gaming review world really works. Even though there was no sure confirmation on how and why Jeff was sacked by the popular publication, a scandal immediately erupted and gave people enough food for thought to last them for years to come.